Latest news with #EdwardR.Martin
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Ed Martin's conduct in office raises serious questions about his ethics
Some think Merrick Garland should have moved faster to prosecute everyone involved with the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Others think the Biden Justice Department went too far. Opinions vary on prosecutorial judgment calls. Still, there are guardrails that government lawyers should never cross — even on a president's instruction. Recent actions from Edward R. Martin, Jr., the current interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, raise questions about when a federal prosecutor goes too far. Martin's behavior at the helm of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia has already alarmed many lawyers. The Society for the Rule of Law wrote to Disciplinary Counsel for the D.C. Bar on Apr. 14,, 2025, asking the Bar to review his conduct for ethical discipline. Their letter highlights Martin's statements suggesting 'he was criminally investigating perceived political enemies of himself and the president,' and questions whether he gave legal advice to a Jan. 6 defendant while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney. Martin has already added more fuel to the fire. That same day, he wrote to the editor-in-chief of CHEST Journal (the Journal of the American College of Chest Physicians) and to other medical journals with vague complaints and inquiries about misinformation and possible undisclosed advertisers or sponsors. It goes off the rails by asking, among other things, 'Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?' This is science we're talking about. Even though some journals have made mistakes, responsible editors vet submissions and care about the integrity of their publications. Thus, Martin's government office pretends to be investigating a problem that academic journals already address — and those journals are better positioned to vet the science than a prosecutor without a science background. These letters, along with executive orders targeting law firms on the flimsiest national security pretexts, reveal a broader attack on dissent. Assume, for the sake of argument, that CHEST or the other journals targeted published some crackpot medical theories. Under what authority would the government intervene? The Commerce Clause? Is the new standard that everything must be published along with a competing viewpoint? What troubles us is when lawyers of any administration, or of any private client for that matter, act without apparent hesitation to consider whether what the client asks of them is legally the right thing to do. In legal ethics, clients set the objective, and lawyers work within the law to achieve that objective. But there are limits on furthering a client's objective. Lawyers cannot counsel clients to do illegal things, for instance, and cannot assist clients with illegal actions. Lawyers are also encouraged to provide advice that's not merely an interpretation of the law but also addresses 'other considerations such as moral, economic, social and political factors, that may be relevant to the client's situation.' As Elihu Root famously said, according to Sol Linowitz, 'About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.' We would have hoped that the government's own lawyers would have told their client not to send these letters. So why would Martin send these letters? If he was instructed to lean on groups that have been critical of the administration, that instruction appears to violate the First Amendment. If the president or the attorney general maintains an enemies list, the objective of 'go after those enemies in every way possible' is not a permissible objective for a lawyer to pursue, in the same way that 'pull every trick in the book in discovery' is not permissible. And the Department of Justice knows this. It recently launched a working group to 'identify instances where [government] conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.' If the Trump administration believes it would have been wrong for the Biden administration to abuse prosecutorial offices, how can it tolerate this behavior? To be sure, it might seem easy for two tenured professors to say, 'stand up to your boss,' because we enjoy incredible job security. We get that. But law is both a profession and a business. Lawyers must always remember one critical ethics rule: lawyers bear ethical responsibility for their choices. Ultimately, enough is enough. Federal prosecutors should not use the power of the federal government to suppress views. And for the federal prosecutors who do so anyway, state bars have the right and the responsibility to investigate that behavior. Benjamin P. Edwards is a professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Nancy B. Rapoport is the Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV, and an affiliate professor of business law and ethics in its Lee Business School. The authors write in their personal capacity and not on behalf of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The Hill
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Ed Martin's conduct in office raises serious questions about his ethics
Some think Merrick Garland should have moved faster to prosecute everyone involved with the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Others think the Biden Justice Department went too far. Opinions vary on prosecutorial judgment calls. Still, there are guardrails that government lawyers should never cross — even on a president's instruction. Recent actions from Edward R. Martin, Jr., the current interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, raise questions about when a federal prosecutor goes too far. Martin's behavior at the helm of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia has already alarmed many lawyers. The Society for the Rule of Law wrote to Disciplinary Counsel for the D.C. Bar on Apr. 14,, 2025, asking the Bar to review his conduct for ethical discipline. Their letter highlights Martin's statements suggesting 'he was criminally investigating perceived political enemies of himself and the president,' and questions whether he gave legal advice to a Jan. 6 defendant while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney. Martin has already added more fuel to the fire. That same day, he wrote to the editor-in-chief of CHEST Journal (the Journal of the American College of Chest Physicians) and to other medical journals with vague complaints and inquiries about misinformation and possible undisclosed advertisers or sponsors. It goes off the rails by asking, among other things, 'Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?' This is science we're talking about. Even though some journals have made mistakes, responsible editors vet submissions and care about the integrity of their publications. Thus, Martin's government office pretends to be investigating a problem that academic journals already address — and those journals are better positioned to vet the science than a prosecutor without a science background. These letters, along with executive orders targeting law firms on the flimsiest national security pretexts, reveal a broader attack on dissent. Assume, for the sake of argument, that CHEST or the other journals targeted published some crackpot medical theories. Under what authority would the government intervene? The Commerce Clause? Is the new standard that everything must be published along with a competing viewpoint? What troubles us is when lawyers of any administration, or of any private client for that matter, act without apparent hesitation to consider whether what the client asks of them is legally the right thing to do. In legal ethics, clients set the objective, and lawyers work within the law to achieve that objective. But there are limits on furthering a client's objective. Lawyers cannot counsel clients to do illegal things, for instance, and cannot assist clients with illegal actions. Lawyers are also encouraged to provide advice that's not merely an interpretation of the law but also addresses 'other considerations such as moral, economic, social and political factors, that may be relevant to the client's situation.' As Elihu Root famously said, according to Sol Linowitz, 'About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.' We would have hoped that the government's own lawyers would have told their client not to send these letters. So why would Martin send these letters? If he was instructed to lean on groups that have been critical of the administration, that instruction appears to violate the First Amendment. If the president or the attorney general maintains an enemies list, the objective of 'go after those enemies in every way possible' is not a permissible objective for a lawyer to pursue, in the same way that 'pull every trick in the book in discovery' is not permissible. And the Department of Justice knows this. It recently launched a working group to 'identify instances where [government] conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.' If the Trump administration believes it would have been wrong for the Biden administration to abuse prosecutorial offices, how can it tolerate this behavior? To be sure, it might seem easy for two tenured professors to say, 'stand up to your boss,' because we enjoy incredible job security. We get that. But law is both a profession and a business. Lawyers must always remember one critical ethics rule: lawyers bear ethical responsibility for their choices. Ultimately, enough is enough. Federal prosecutors should not use the power of the federal government to suppress views. And for the federal prosecutors who do so anyway, state bars have the right and the responsibility to investigate that behavior. Benjamin P. Edwards is a professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Nancy B. Rapoport is Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV, and an affiliate professor of business law and ethics in its Lee Business School. The authors write in their personal capacity and not on behalf of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Scientific American
01-05-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
The Scary Implications of U.S. Government Attacks on Medical Journals
In April, I decided to make public a leaked letter from the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to the editor-in-chief of CHEST, a leading pulmonology and critical care journal. I did so because the letter represents an authoritarian threat to science, and I knew it wasn't an isolated, bizarre incident. It is a warning sign, another move in a broader campaign to exert control over research, medicine and media. The letter asserts that 'publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.' It was written by recently appointed acting U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., who gives no examples that might demonstrate partisanship; nor does he cite any laws or legal principles to indicate a matter that should concern the U.S. government. Instead, without justification or jurisdiction over a private medical journal based in Illinois, he simply invokes his federal office to demand that CHEST explain if it accepts 'competing viewpoints,' and how it is now developing 'new norms' to adjust its editorial methods in view of its alleged—by Martin—biases. Since I publicly shared this, at least four additional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, have confirmed receipt of similar letters, according to MedPage Today, STAT News, the New York Times and Science. Aside from Eric Rubin at the NEJM, none of the targeted editors have been willing to go on record, fearing retribution from the Trump administration. It's likely that letters were sent to many more journals; CHEST 's was simply the first to leak. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Why CHEST? It's a specialty outlet—not even among the top 50 medical journals. Is this a keyword-driven campaign like those we've seen at the CDC and NIH? Under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., terms like 'diversity,' 'minority' and 'equity' have been systematically flagged. This has led to elimination of federal positions and programs, cancellation of research grants, and scrubbing of government websites and statistics —all related to these words. A search of CHEST 's archive for 'transgender,' for example, returns 33 hits—articles acknowledging the clinical implications of caring for trans patients (e.g., ventilator settings may need to be adjusted). Add in other Trump-targeted terms like race, disparity, female and disability, and we can see the outlines of a new DOJ-led front in the administration's campaign to target minorities for denial of care, legalized discrimination and bureaucratic erasure. Kennedy has also previously objected to medical journals not publishing studies that support his debunked and baseless theories, such as false claims that vaccines cause autism, declaring a plan to 'create our own journals' to publish such studies. Last year, while running his own presidential campaign, he stated he would take legal action against editors in response: 'I'm going to litigate against you under the racketeering laws, under the general tort laws. I'm going to find a way to sue you unless you come up with a plan right now to show how you're going to start publishing real science.' Kennedy is not a scientist and has no training in medicine. He has not volunteered to submit his claims to the types of critical, anonymized expert reviews that are designed to support scientific rigor at scientific journals. Kennedy frequently makes evidence-free claims on podcasts and television shows and now in government press conferences, regardless of the consequences. However, peer-reviewed journals like CHEST require extensive scrutiny as part of their evaluation process. Outside scientists examine submitted studies for biases, errors, and unsupported claims or conclusions, and authors are required to include statements about conflicts of interest—including reasons for even just the appearance of bias in the eyes of others—and to disclose their funding sources. This is routine procedure at journals, about which Martin's letter indicates he knows strikingly little. We don't know Martin's, Kennedy's or Trump's specific motivations in sending a letter to CHEST, but it is clear that Martin's threat to journals is not a one-off stunt. Like Trump's actions that cut off or threaten federal research funding at Columbia, Harvard and other universities, it appears to be part of a calculated strategy to identify, isolate and intimidate researchers who, and institutions that, acknowledge realities like inequality, social differences and structural violence. American health institutions have long been entangled with state violence: forced sterilizations of Black and Indigenous women, repression of civil rights protesters, collaboration with anti-immigrant policing, the push to categorize queer people as pathological and dangerous, and denial of reproductive and gender-affirming care. These alliances are enabled by a professional culture that rewards compliance and punishes dissent. In that respect, the Trump administration's mounting ideological control over medicine represents not a historical rupture but rather a continuation of sordid legacies. To understand what is now transpiring, it is important to note that Martin has never before been a prosecutor. He has no experience in criminal litigation, appointed to his post to serve political ends. Since taking office, he has hired Michael Caputo —Trump's disgraced first-term COVID spokesman who then infamously accused government scientists of ' sedition '—as an advisor at the U.S. Attorney's Office. The message is clear: this is not about law enforcement. It is about using state power to intimidate scientists and suppress dissent. Against this backdrop, if journal editors refuse to speak out and organize to defend academic freedom, they will not only ultimately fail to protect themselves and their journals. They will also sacrifice targeted communities. When confronted by government intimidation driven by personal ideological agendas instead of the public good, silence is complicity—not neutrality. We must refuse to compromise when the Trump administration comes first for stigmatized and vulnerable groups—such as trans individuals, disabled people, or immigrants they label as 'criminals' —as a means of normalizing state violence and expanding its unconstitutional reach. This is not the time to issue hollow statements condemning the supposed ' politicization of science '—a line that conflates partisan interests with what should be bipartisan political principles upon which rigorous scientific practice, ethical clinical care and genuine public health depend. Science is always already political, and we must organize politically to defend it against authoritarian threats. That requires calling out the Trump administration's intimidation campaign for what it is: a McCarthyite attempt to purge science of inconvenient truths and ethical foundations. The production of knowledge, the allocation of care, and the very questions we ask and answer, are all shaped by systems of power. When medical professionals pretend otherwise, we create a vacuum. And that vacuum is quickly filled by the loudest ideologues and most craven opportunists. To fight back, we need coordinated action and solidarity with those most targeted. And we need to stop pretending that defending science means staying above politics. Provoked by the revelation of Martin's letter, The Lancet —a world-leading, London-based medical journal—has taken on this public responsibility and done what its American counterparts have so far declined to do: published a clear and forceful editorial stance condemning the Trump administration's assault on science, medicine, and public health, and calling for Kennedy's resignation. Other journal editors and health leaders should now join in taking such principled political stands. To do so, they must give up on the naïve fantasy that, if they just keep their heads low enough, they can avoid becoming targets and simply wait out the Trump administration as it destroys essential scientific infrastructure. Martin's letter is a declaration that scientific inquiry is no longer safe unless it aligns with state ideology. If we let that stand, we don't just lose our journals. We lose the right to ask questions that matter—and the ability to care for those most in need.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.S. cracks down on Hamas-linked crypto network, seizes over $200K
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the seizure of close to $201,400 worth of cryptocurrency tied to a network that has been allegedly used for fundraising for Hamas and laundering funds connected to the Islamist group, representing a major disruption of a years-long terrorist financing effort. As per court documents, the funds were traced to wallets and accounts actively fundraising for the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas). The government said that the confiscated funds were part of a larger scheme that washed more than $1.5 million in digital currency since October 2024. U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., National Security Division head Sue J. Bai, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Raul Bujanda of the Albuquerque Field Office announced the action. Investigators say supporters of Hamas were guided via encrypted group chats to give to at least 17 rotating cryptocurrency addresses. The addresses funneled money into one central wallet, where the assets were laundered using a series of exchanges, suspected financiers, and over-the-counter brokers. 'Hamas is responsible for the deaths of many U.S. and Israeli nationals, and we will use every legal tool at our disposal to stop their campaign of terror and murder,' said U.S. Attorney Martin. Special Agent Bujanda and the FBI emphasized that this was part of a strategic disruption, saying, 'This success demonstrates that financial warfare is a critical component in fighting terrorism.' The seized addresses totaled about $89,900, and 3 other crypto accounts totaled $111,500. These corresponded to Palestinians living in Turkey and other parts of the globe. Attorneys from the DOJ's National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. are prosecuting the case, which was investigated by the FBI's Albuquerque Field Office and its Counterterrorism and Cyber Divisions.
